Bond with influencers to market your business

Brands and agencies are taking horrible approaches when it comes to trying to develop a relationship with influencers. You have to earn your keep with influencers these days. Provide them with ways for to highlight your product or service in a way that lines up with their brand and mission. If you’re thinking about “buying influence” for your brand think again, it’s highly unlikely that any star influencer is going to be a part of any paid promotion of products unless its directly related to their area of expertise, the interests of their fan base or their own personal interests, here are a few reasons why:

Influencers have three important factors to consider:

They have to stay consistent in what they have been doing in order to maintain their authority. Their audience will get confused if they start marketing or promoting completely unrelated items.

The authority they have was established based on their knowledge and experience in their field. So talking about something they are not experts on can have repercussions.

They try to build a reputation that shows they are reliable and trustworthy. So would rather not be associated with anything that can ruin that reputation.

Before engaging with influencers, get to know more about them; their topics, their values, their passions and concerns. Tailor your product or service in a way that benefits them.

The key to finding influencers is by providing things that offers direct value to what they’re doing.

Offer them something that brings more efficiency to their lives or work, like apps and tools.

Create content that will be considered valuable by their audience.

Offer an unusual experience (you can get creative here).

Be a problem solver.

The market is getting so saturated that influencers are tired with the mass emails asking for ad space or requests that clearly show the brand has no real interest in them because they didn’t take the time to learn about who they are. It’s actually pretty insulting when you think about it because influencers have so much information to offer, yet a brand isn’t bothered with taking the time out to do some research on who that person is before sending requests. Try to focus on respecting the human nature of influencers, this is the only way to really get through to them. Remember, they’re people too.

Create partnerships with Influencers instead of trying to buy them out

Again, remember to focus on respecting how they feel. Deliver value, instead of acting like you’re entitled to something.

Include a budget for creating or supporting events that highlights the vision and values of their brand.

Invite influencers to share their posts and perspectives on your brand pages, instead of on their own pages. This protects them from polluting their pages with unrelated content.

Never ask to be the primary focus of an article or review that they have. Be content with any mention or feature that you get.